Takei Reacts To Arizona Bill

Star Trek‘s George Takei is not happy with the new controversial anti-gay bill recently passed in Arizona.

The bill, which would need to be signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer to take effect, would permit business owners to deny service to gays on religious grounds.

“Congratulations,” said Takei. “You are now the first state actually to pass a bill permitting businesses–even those open to the public–to refuse to provide service to LGBT people based on an individual’s ‘“sincerely held religious belief.’ This ‘turn away the gay’ bill enshrines discrimination into the law. Your taxi drivers can refuse to carry us. Your hotels can refuse to house us. And your restaurants can refuse to serve us.”

Takei likened the law to ones in force during the time of Jim Crow. “You say this bill protects ‘religious freedom,’ but no one is fooled,” he said. “When I was younger, people used ‘God’s Will’ as a reason to keep the races separate, too. Make no mistake, this is the new segregation, yours is a Jim Crow law, and you are about to make yourself ground zero.”

If Arizona does indeed make the anti-gay bill law, expect a backlash, says Takei. “If your Governor Jan Brewer signs this repugnant bill into law, make no mistake. We will not come,” he said. “We will not spend. And we will urge everyone we know–from large corporations to small families on vacation–to boycott. Because you don’t deserve our dollars. Not one red cent.”

Author

We don’t really disagree here. The bill was a pre-emptive “solution” in search of a problem that has not surfaced in Arizona, written by a legislature not known for its caution. I would indeed hope conservatives would oppose reckless laws, as I’ve always believed “conservatism” to be, by definition, a suspicion of radical change without compelling cause and a belief in societal and political stability by way of a maintenance of status quo for as long as is tenable. (None of which seems to have much to do with today’s Right or Left, both of which, I am convinced, are quite mad, which has left me politically as well as religiously agnostic.)

And I can add nothing more to what you said about the right of businesses to set their own policies, and to succeed or fail accordingly.

My point, however, is that it doesn’t end there. I see the societal pendulum swinging decidedly against the right of people to do business as they choose and act as they choose, come what may. I heard it in the purely emotional debate over S.B. 1062 which had virtually nothing to do with the legislation itself, a national circus given voice by the kind of insanely hyperbolic garbage coming out of the mouth of one George Takei, who knows that Christians are easy media targets in 2014 and so doesn’t have a problem comparing people of religious conscience to Bull Connor. Calm appeals to reason should have been all that were needed to shoot down an obviously flawed and unnecessary piece of legislation — Brewer was never going to sign this thing anyway — but instead its opponents, rather than take the opportunity to be the adults in the room, decided to ramp the inflammatory bullshit up to 11. People like Takei don’t change minds this way, they only harden hearts and entrench resentments. One would think that a guy who promotes himself via linkage to a franchise that was dedicated to the idea that people could learn to live together might get that, sooner or later.

Blue Thunder

To persecute innocent people for no reason, obviously. The South is full of such primitive rednecks!

IndyfromAZ

And you watch too much MSNBC…Wow!, what are you a 5 year old who choked on a thesaurus to make themselves sound smart?

IndyfromAZ

I’ll get back to you on The Food Police…

IndyfromAZ

If that only work on Obama…

Kang the Unbalanced

Notice how he/she/it doesn’t respond when a valid point is made?
Or, perhaps, it’s simply taking he/she/it this long to figure out whether they’ve been insulted or not.

Blue Thunder

More like somebody who is in his forties, has been around the block a lot longer, and experienced more in the school of life than you obviously have. I’ve seen Man’s inhumanity towards man, and it is NOT a pretty picture. I don’t need to view some obsolete news network to be informed or reminded of that part of the human equation. So you might want to watch your P’s and Q’s, Junior.

“You are a miserable little son of a bitch, you know that? I don’t know why she took you in the house. And I’ll tell you something else, mister, you may be a lot younger and stronger, but you’re about to get your ass kicked from here to the state line… and I’m wearin’ the boots that can do it!”
– Murphy
Murphy’s Romance

IndyfromAZ

Have you heard about this? New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez,
a Republican, she needs a new hairdresser. Her hairstylist is gay, and
her hairstylist has refused to do her hair anymore because Susana
Martinez is opposed to gay marriage. No, no, no, wait a minute, now.
What
just happened in Arizona? There was a religious freedom law that
didn’t once mention homosexuality or any of that or gay marriage or any
of that. It was portrayed as an anti-gay piece of legislation, when it
wasn’t. I don’t want to rehash that.

Here is the exact opposite. This guy’s a hairstylist named Antonio
Darden, he’s gay, and it’s totally fine for him to refuse to do the
governor’s hair. Totally fine. Now, imagine if she, already opposed to
gay marriage, finds out her hairdresser is gay and refuses, can you
imagine the absolute hell that would break out over that? So it’s a
one-way street here. If this were in Arizona,
the way this would work out is that the gay couple would walk out of
the bakery when they learned that the baker would not bake ’em a cake,
instead of what happened there. But it’s perfectly fine for this guy to
refuse to continue doing her hair because she’s obviously a bigot and a
homophobe, and all that.

Kang the Unbalanced

Yes, I’d imagine everyone has heard of it; snotty little twats have been waving it all around saying “Well what do you think about that, Mr. Doesn’t-Hate-Gays? Nyauauarh!”
Fine. I’ll give you the “can’t-be-bothered-to-read” version first:
Yes, idiot, of course it’s discriminatory of him to do that, and it may actually be against New Mexico state law. I’m not sure, because New Mexico needs to pull its collective head from it’s arse and decide which of their two conflicting laws is more important to them: the one allowing businesses to refuse service, and the one forbidding them to refuse service. As it stands, Governor Martinez can probably sue him, under those same public accommodation laws.
My own personal opinion is that he should be allowed to refuse service for any reason, just as any Arizona business currently can, and as New Mexico businesses should be able to, but legally cannot.
Several people in this thread, myself included, have stated flat out that they believe private businesses should have the right to refuse service for any reason, and to deal with the results of doing so, be that lost business, bad publicity, whatever.
This hairstylist incident is in New Mexico, and businesses there operate under New Mexico state law. New Mexico was shortsighted enough to enact a public accommodation law, which forbids their private businesses to refuse service in a discriminatory manner, that is at odds with the state’s existing Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This puts New Mexico in an uncomfortable position, and New Mexico needs to decide how these conflicting laws can work together, and if they can’t, to remove or amend them.
There is already a movement afoot to take the Elane Photography v. Willock decision to the United States Supreme Court, and if that happens, the results will define how state public accommodation laws and state RFRAs interact. So until then, kindly grab your coat and hat, pack up your pathetic attempts to pick fights, and piss off.

IndyfromAZ

Yeah, me being in my Fifties, young man, has nothing to do with your “experience”.
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
human face – forever.”–George Orwell.

IndyfromAZ

“Well what do you think about that, Mr. Doesn’t-Hate-Gays? Nyauauarh!”
Childish Much?
Still haven’t looked at the Hobby Lobby case I bet? 🙂

Blue Thunder

Maybe so. But it is still experience, nonetheless.

“If none of us ever read a book that was “dangerous,” had a friend who was “different,” or joined an organization that advocated “change,” we would all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.”
– Edward Roscoe Murrow